Michael Gove's mangling of sport in schools

How timely it was for Vince Cable to be recorded worrying that the government's sweeping policy changes are "not thought through", just as Michael Gove was mincing through his forced rethink on wiping out £162m for sport in schools. In October, Gove had removed the funding for 450 school sport partnerships (SSPs), which have provided national momentum for a reinvigoration of sport in state schools – decimated when the Conservatives were last in power. Being secretary of state for education surely requires some appreciation of research, but Gove slashed the SSPs without ever having visited one, or inquiring properly into their effectiveness. David Cameron, who was gambolling on the playing fields of Eton while state school sport was being trashed in the 1980s, derided the SSPs record on competitive sport as "pathetic". The outcry against such sorry myth-making forced the partial climbdown because it came not just from the SSPs, sports educators, headteachers and thousands of young people – whose objections Gove could ordinarily dismiss – but also from Conservative backbenchers (who had done what their minister had not, visited schools to see the SSPs' work for themselves) and from Tory-supporting newspapers. This one cut has now become a significant landmark: the first of all the "not-thought-through" policies the coalition has agreed to reverse, at least in part. True to form, what Gove announced this week was mean – no admission he had been wrong – and ill thought through. It appears now to be an 87% cut rather than 100% – £65m will be spread over three years, in place of the previous £162m a year. The Youth Sport Trust, which oversees the SSPs, is trying to make sense of it for schools. Even in that announcement, Gove presented another piece of prejudice as considered policy, saying the government is following "a traditional belief that competitive sport … brings out the best in everyone". This marks a huge policy bias, based on no research whatsoever. Repeated questions of the Department for Education about what evidence Gove is relying on have met only silence. His statement came within a week of Sport England figures showing that despite concerted public investment, adult participation in competitive sport is down, while more people are getting off their sofas to go running or cycling independently. Children, as PE professionals increasingly understand, need to be educated for fitness in adult life, when the opportunity for competitive sport – even for those who do enjoy it – is more limited, and they must be helped to learn the joy of exercise for itself, not always as a contest. The DfE has also persistently declined to say whether Gove, advocate general of competitive sport, does any himself. Those who knew him at school are understood to have snitched, reporting that sport was "not his thing". Those who do believe in the character-building benefits of competitive sport – which have never been authoritatively proven – claim they produce grownups who will understand the need for training and preparation, give their all, respect others including opponents, hold their hands up when they make a mistake, and take defeat with grace. None of these qualities have been evident in the shabby episode of the education secretary and his ill-considered mangling of school sport.